Panorama do trabalho (in)formal: breve incursão da classe social precarizada dos catadores de materiais recicláveis

Abstract

Due to the large amount of solid waste that our society produces daily, it is essential that waste management strategies are established in order to offer it an adequate destination, avoiding environmental damage. It is at this juncture that the importance of collectors of recyclable materials is seen, as they fulfill not only an environmental function, maintaining urban centers and reusing waste in the recycling process, but also a socioeconomic function, collecting and sorting raw material for recycling. industry, while generating income for their own subsistence. However, despite the relevance of these workers, they continue to not receive due recognition from society, in addition to being subjected to precarious working conditions and being the target of discrimination from individuals and groups in a higher position in the social hierarchy. Faced with this antagonism between value and devaluation of the work of collectors of recyclable materials, this article proposes to examine the source of this contradiction, covering, to this end, notions such as mode of production, social formation, capitalism, social stratification, precariousness of the class worker, consumer relations and social production, with a view to producing a reading about this phenomenon. It is based on the hypothesis that, despite the importance of their work, collectors of recyclable materials, as they deal with the remains of consumption by classes positioned at a higher socioeconomic level, end up also being assimilated as remains, given the way in which the social production of its existence.